by Nikki Godwin
“Okay, we’ll talk to Vin. I’ll offer to go along,” I surrender.
“Now,” Topher says. “I’d rather catch him at the store than at home. I went back because I missed my bed, but things still aren’t good between us. He’s more likely to cave in if I ask him while he’s working.”
I tell Topher to go catch Vin before he leaves and that I’m on my way. Reed asks if I have any new information on Colby’s situation. He texts Alston and A.J. to make sure they’ll be at home tonight so we can discuss it. I bail immediately after because I know Topher will be back if I’m not inside of Drenaline Surf in the next thirty seconds. That boy has no patience.
“Haley said she’d go with me,” Topher says as soon as I walk in the door. “I mean, you hired her to help manage Colby’s image. You can think of this as her managing my image. She won’t let me do anything stupid.”
Vin stands behind the counter with A.J. at his side. He looks unimpressed with Topher’s case, which shoots my confidence straight into the ground. He can’t control Topher forever. It’s a godforsaken surf convention. He should be thankful his little brother isn’t out partying and drinking and screwing any chick he can find like most guys his age. Vin gives Topher no credit, and it’s starting to seriously piss me off.
“I’ll go too,” A.J. volunteers. “I don’t want to get arrested again, so you know I’ll keep him straight. Between Haley and me, we’ve got this.”
Oh God. There’s no way Vin is going to let Topher go anywhere with us. We’re just blue lights waiting to happen. Maybe I should volunteer Reed to go along too, for good measure.
“Fine,” Vin says. “Just go. I don’t feel like arguing with you.”
He turns away, goes into the back office, and shuts the door behind him. I swear, he lives in that damn office. The walls have sucked his soul completely out of his body.
Topher looks over at A.J. “Thanks dude,” he says. “Are you actually going with us?”
A.J. shrugs. “Yeah, I mean, I’m off tomorrow. I don’t have anything else to do. And I might learn something…or something.”
A.J. shuffles around for a minute and then looks at me. “I need a ride home. Reed brought me here this morning. My car’s fucked again,” he says. “Can you give me five minutes to balance the register?”
I tell him I’ll wait in the parking lot and walk outside with Topher. He says he’ll call me in the morning – after sunrise this time – and leaves so he can get home and be locked in his bedroom before Vin gets home. If I knew it wouldn’t piss Vin off too much, I’d tell Topher to crash in the other room in the guest house.
I lock myself in my car and wait longer than the five minutes I promised A.J. He’s all smiles when he gets into my car.
“What are you so damn happy about?” I ask. “Did they resurrect your carnival?”
He laughs but shakes his head. “Vin offered me the manager position at Drenaline Surf. He made Emily head cashier too. He said once they open a second store, he couldn’t run everything for both of them, so he asked if I wanted the spot. He said I could give him an answer next week. I have a few days off to think on it.”
Wow. A.J. managing Drenaline Surf? I bet Shark never saw that coming. I wonder if he would trust Vin’s judgment on that call. I wonder if the surf world will take A.J. seriously on the business end of things. I need to stop wondering so much and speak.
“Are you going to take the position?” I ask, more to the steering wheel than A.J.
He sighs. “I think so. I’m scared about it, and I don’t think I’m smart enough to learn it, but Vin says I am. He said I deserve better, and he doesn’t know what’s going to happen now that Colby’s parents know about him, so I need an income.”
I crank up the car but wait a minute before leaving Drenaline Surf’s parking lot. A.J. definitely needs an income, as do I. Hopefully Vin will actually let me do some public relations work this summer. At this rate, the most PR work I’ll do is keeping Topher out of jail.
“And Vin doesn’t know about the lawsuit,” A.J. reminds me. “So I’m sort of a step ahead of him on that. This may be the only chance I have to do something with my life.”
“You’re smart enough to learn it,” I say. “Don’t sell yourself short. This is your chance to do something for yourself and prove the world wrong at the same time. You should take it.”
“You’re right,” he says. “I’m going to take it.”
Chapter Thirteen
“I promise you, Theo said it was straight down I-10, and then you take the Golden View exit,” Topher says, reaching for his cell phone. “Call him and make sure that’s right.”
Miles volunteers to call Theo from the backseat. Emily gripes that Topher has no sense of direction, and A.J. says that he’s sort of glad because he didn’t want to go to some board shaping seminar anyway. I’m just thankful I’m riding shotgun, but you pretty much get dibs when the entire group decides to ride in your car.
“You idiot!” Miles shouts from behind me. “It was the Fairmont exit past Golden View. You’re not even in the right town, Topher.”
Topher sighs and mumbles something about telling Theo to take notes for him. Part of me doubted that Topher really wanted to go to this convention, but then again, he was so excited over the possibility of someday surfing on a Rob Hodges surfboard. Maybe wanting to go was legit and not just a ploy to get away from Vin.
“We’ll just follow this road until we find a place to turn around,” Topher says, defeat in his voice. “I’m sorry I screwed up the directions.”
He pulls into a mall’s parking lot to get turned around and back on track toward Crescent Cove, but Emily gasps about the same time A.J. shouts for Topher to stop the car. There’s a carnival in town.
My heart sinks to the floorboard when I see the ferris wheel over the mall’s roof. I never had a chance to see A.J.’s carnival in its prime, or to see his love for it, but the thought of him facing a carnival in the midst of his sacred ground’s destruction hurts my soul. Until A.J. speaks.
“We have to fucking go,” he says, leaning over the side of the driver’s seat. “Dude, we can’t make it to the convention, and you know you don’t want to go home. Let’s do this.”
Emily slides forward on the backseat, poking her head in between Topher and me. “Plot twist!” she shouts. “I haven’t been to a carnival pretty much ever. My mom never let me go when I was a kid, and I was like the only kid at school who never got to go. I had to lie and pretend like I was there or say I was out of town so I wouldn’t look uncool.”
We park at the mall and walk around to where the carnival has set up. A live band plays some country-rock song about porch swings and sweet tea. A pharaoh ship swings in the distance, much like A.J.’s pirate ship with the giant dragon that’s painted onto his skin. His eyes light up when he sees the ride.
“Oh my God,” Emily says. Her eyes widen with amazement, like a little kid who just walked into a candy store for the first time. “This is amazing. I want to do everything. Except those rides. I’m so not a thrill seeker.”
“And you’re dating Miles Garrett?” A.J. says, his eyes still fixated on the pharaoh ship. “You’re in the wrong place.”
Miles laughs and wraps an arm around Emily. “There’s one reason and one reason only to go to a carnival – the food,” he says.
Emily squeals that this will be her first carnival meal. She says something about cotton candy, and Miles mentions pickles before they’re out of earshot. The band cranks up the volume while we walk throughout the carnival grounds. It’s crazy to know that in a few days, all of these rides, booths, and people will pack up and move on to the next town, leaving nothing but a trail of glitter in the wind.
Topher, A.J., and I stroll with the movement of the crowd through the game booths. Stuffed dolphins and neon-colored inflatable aliens sway in the breeze, waiting for some eager kid with money to blow to waste his day trying to win one of them. The air smells of hot dogs and grilled burgers. Ree
d should set up at a place like this. He’s a better cook than anyone here, hands down. I’m sure of it.
“Holy fuck of all fucks,” A.J. shouts in my ear. “I know him!”
He says something else, but the electric guitar drowns his words. He points toward a game booth where you can win a gold fish. A short man – an actual dwarf – stands on a stepstool pointing to the balloons on the back wall. A young kid throws darts toward them.
“That’s Big G!” A.J. says, bouncing like Topher does when he’s excited. “His name is really Gordon, but we called him Big G. He worked the funnel cake stand at my carnival.”
“Go!” I yell, waving him off with my hand.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the whites of A.J.’s eyes as clearly as I just did. Even when he’s sober, he has this completely stoned stare. Sometimes that expression could pass for sleep deprivation, but all in all, A.J. looks stoned every day of his life, even at his best.
I watch the exchange of hugs and high fives at the dart booth. Both A.J. and ‘Big G’ speak simultaneously, probably in shock to run into each other here. A.J. never talks about his friends from the carnival. From the little he told me last summer, I gathered that many of them were homeless, living with the carnival for a means of security and family. I think they were the only family A.J. really had.
“Want to walk with me?” Topher leans into my ear and asks. “You know, I figured we could let them have their family reunion, and we could look around.”
“Sounds good,” I say.
We push through the crowd until we get to the vendor booths. I laugh the moment I see the shell jewelry. I don’t wear A.J.’s shell necklace a lot, but I do save it for special occasions. Topher is instantly drawn to the shark tooth jewelry, even though I’ve never seen him wear anything other than a surf leash.
He picks up a braided bracelet, made out of a hemp-like material. A white shark’s tooth is sewn into the black material. He puts it on his wrist and tightens it to fit.
“Too girly?” he asks, holding it up for me to see.
I shake my head. “I actually like it. It’s very Topher-ish,” I say.
“Well, in that case, you need one too so you can be as awesome as me,” he says. He grabs another one and hands the vendor cash for the two. Then he turns to me. “You have to promise to wear it.”
“Promise,” I say as he tightens it onto my wrist.
We browse the other booths for a bit until we run into Emily and Miles. A wooden sea turtle pendant hangs from the necklace Emily wears. Miles doesn’t see us at first because he’s too engulfed in his nachos. He wasn’t kidding about coming to carnivals to eat.
“Where’s A.J.?” Emily asks, tugging the turtle back and forth on its cord.
I explain the family reunion with Big G as Miles tells Topher in depth about the fried pickles he ate earlier. We stop for Emily to buy cotton candy. A.J. finds us a moment later, funnel cake in hand. Topher and I join him at a picnic table. A.J. fills us in on the history of Big G.
“He thinks he lived past lives,” A.J. explains as he nibbles on the funnel cake. “He actually tells the same stories, though. It’s not like a crazy person who tells something different every time. All of his details are exactly the same, from the fire breathers and elephant’s water curse to the six-foot-ten clown named Cricket.”
My heart breaks as A.J. tells his tale. I’m not sure if it hurts for Big G and his delusions or the fact that A.J. takes him seriously. I know A.J.’s dad was never in his life, and his mom lives in and out of rehab clinics. A.J. basically raised himself. Sometimes I think the carnies raised him. These people mean something to him, even now that they aren’t in his life. So I listen just as intently as I do when Topher tells me stories about Shark.
“I think he was happy to see me, though,” A.J. says in between bites. “He said he’s thinking about getting out of the carnival life. He said some boxer in Chicago is looking for a hype team, some dude called The Dragon or something. He thinks he’s the right fit for it.”
Emily rushes over to the table, squealing about face painting and butterflies. Miles just shrugs behind her, hardly paying attention as he finishes off her cotton candy. If he had actually heard the word ‘butterflies,’ he may not be so willing to follow her.
“We should get our faces painted,” she says, clinging to my arm and pulling me to my feet. She drags me toward a tent with a green roof. “It’ll be so cute. I already know what I want.”
“Aww fuck,” A.J. says. “How old are you?”
Emily puts a hand on her hip and stares him down under her sparkly eyeshadow and thick eyelashes. “Excuse me, Mr. Gonzalez, but you have permanent paintings inked into your arms. So if I want a butterfly temporarily painted on my face, there shouldn’t be a problem,” she says.
Well, that settles that. A.J. says something under his breath about dragons versus butterflies, but I ignore him because it’s as useless as the Billabong and Hurley argument.
The face-painting lady spends a few minutes transforming Emily’s face into a lime green and white butterfly, its antennas sprouting between her perfectly-crafted eyebrows. She bribes Miles with promises of chili cheese fries and pink lemonade, and he quickly surrenders to the full-face lizard design she picked out for him. The green scales that line his cheek bones actually look fitting yet creepy with his dreadlocks.
“Ohmygosh, we’re so cute,” she says into a mirror. “We’re like our own little garden.”
I wish I had a video camera because no one will ever believe that badass Miles Garrett would cave in so easily to a cute little girl who looks like a pixie. But here he stands, lizard-faced, letting his girlfriend compare them to butterflies and lizards in a summer flower bed. God help him.
“This one,” A.J. says, pointing to something in a photo album under the tent. “I want the full face thing, like Miles got. But this one.”
I lean over his shoulder to see the image. It’s a guy with his face painted like a skeleton. I secretly wonder if Emily has voodoo dolls – um, Enchanters – in her purse in the forms of A.J. and Miles. No Hooligan and self-proclaimed jailbird should ever give in to face paintings under the persuasion of a girl. Not even Enchanted Emily, who is clearly magical in every aspect of the word.
As the sunset drops over the carnival, lighting up the sky in hues of cotton candy and pink lemonade, I swear, her magic flows even in my blood because I don’t argue when she begs me and Topher to live a little. I don’t go with a full-face design like the three of them, but the little blue seahorse fits perfectly on my cheek, as the gray shark fits on the side of Topher’s face. We’re officially five years old all over again.
“There’s only one thing left to do,” A.J. says after we pay for our temporary ink jobs. “We have to ride the pharaoh ship.”
Emily protests and stomps her pink flip flops on the pavement, but A.J. refuses to listen to her excuses that the ship may break or the machinery could malfunction and cause her to fall out. I even crack up when she says the ship may not stop swinging and just make a full circle in the air. She was right – she isn’t into thrill rides. But I wouldn’t consider the pharaoh ship to be much of a thrill in comparison.
Amongst her protests, she still climbs aboard and settles onto the plastic seat next to Miles. I wedge myself between Topher and A.J. directly behind the Drenaline Surf power couple. Miles looks over his shoulder, holds out his cell phone, and announces that this will be the ultimate five-person selfie. We squeeze in as Miles stretches his arm out to make sure all five of us fit into the frame.
Once the ship sets sail, Emily white-knuckles the metal bar that rests over her while Miles freaks her out every two seconds by letting go and screaming, ‘no hands!’ A.J. throws his head back laughing. Against the backdrop of a red sky, his skeletonized face is that of a creepy monster in the night. The wind rushes through my hair and over my skin, and for the first time this summer, I feel free.
I almost wish the drive from Golden View back to Cresc
ent Cove didn’t have to end. I twist the shark’s tooth bracelet around on my wrist while Emily and A.J. discuss the pharaoh ride and how it wasn’t nearly as scary as she thought it was going to be. Miles tells Topher to drive faster because he’s hungry, which is inconceivable to me. He’s as solid and ripped as a freaking Horn Island rock. I don’t even know where he puts all this food.
“Fuck,” A.J. says. “I need to stop by Drenaline. I left my keys there earlier when I went to open the safe. Vin was at lunch. Can you run by there?”
“No prob,” Topher says. “Vin should be gone, and I have door keys, so I can let us in. He may have fired me, but he’s too damn stupid to take my keys away.”
He says something about washing the shark off of his face before going home, so Vin won’t know that we missed Rob Hodges’s seminar on board shaping. Emily insists on taking more photos before he cleanses his evidence. So we all get out and go inside for better lighting when we get to Drenaline Surf.
“Professionalism is definitely a priority for us,” Vin’s voice echoes throughout the main room of the store. “I make sure my staff and our surfers represent what Drenaline Surf was created for.”
It’s too late to sneak back out. He looks over, away from the man in the suit next to him, and sees us – the butterfly, the lizard, the skeleton, the seahorse, and the shark. The color drains from Vin’s face upon seeing the colors on ours. I literally hear his face cringe, as if bones are snapping and crunching.
“Um, well,” he says, looking back to the man and his faded red tie. “Let me, uh, introduce you to some people.”
Vin walks across the room with weighted legs, just like I did when I had to meet Logan Riley. I bet Vin wishes Logan was here now. He could represent all that professionalism that I’m sure we don’t. The other guy follows him. A smile decorates his face, like he’s humored by the situation. He doesn’t look much older than Vin.
“From left to right,” Vin says, looking at the floor instead of us. “Emily Black, my head cashier. Miles Garrett, sponsored surfer. A.J. Gonzalez, my new manager. Haley Sullivan, public relations. And Topher Brooks, my kid brother.”
